Word: thresholds
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...many of them can remember family tales of the crossing. Most have an intimate knowledge of the laborious ancestral climb from sweatshops to Blue Cross and double time for overtime, from the reeking streets to tract housing. They remember, they are grateful, and they have a very low threshold of tolerance when it comes to criticism of the nation that made the advance possible. For them, the criticism does not apply; they give it the lie by invoking their own past...
...anomalies of this campaign that Richard Nixon, with an almost Lyndonesque thirst for "consensus," seems to have slighted those other battles. According to every indicator, the President now stands on the threshold of a personal triumph. The "born loser" of the early 1960s seems within reach of an overwhelming political victory: even millions of Democrats to whom he was once a partisan pariah will be pulling Republican levers. But Nixon, the loyal party man who owed so much to Republican Party workers down the line, now seems unwilling to share that popularity with his colleagues. Largely as a result...
...that pet owners hush obstreperous dogs, cats and parrots. But the code's real importance lies in setting strict, quantifiable limits on the most offensive and easily controlled city sounds: the cacophony of machinery. The limits are measured in decibels on a logarithmic scale that runs from the threshold of hearing (1) through the level of hearing impairment (85 db, if continuous) to that of acute pain (135 db). (By comparison, normal conversation registers at about 55 db, a vacuum cleaner at 70 db, and a jet taking off at 118 db.) If quieter machinery does not yet exist...
That scenario may not be as farfetched as it seems. In a recent speech, Air Force Under Secretary John L. MeLucas suggested that "we are on the threshold of utilizing them [remotecontrolled aircraft] for selected missions." Presumably, McLucas was referring to Southeast Asia, the only place where U.S. planes are currently making strikes. His words only hinted at what the Armed Forces Journal calls "the hottest idea" currently being discussed by Pentagon strategists: the creation of a force of flying robots that could ultimately revolutionize aerial and indeed all forms of warfare. Some enthusiastic military thinkers are convinced that robot...
...million, in fact -enough to assure him of a second shot at film making. Before that, he played, improbably, the nephew of one 007 in Casino Royale. Allen got no scenarist's credit for the film, but audiences could sense his touch throughout. "I have a low threshold of death," he bleated in one scene, as a firing squad counted down, aiming their rifles at his sunken chest...